Further Reading

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Product DescriptionWe may be the last generation to inhabit bodies not routinely reconstructed by surgical enhancements. Over the last decades, our body has become an individual statement and a crucial personal responsibility. For many of us, it is the source of terrible difficulty, while for others it is an expensive commodity...In the past decades, the pressure to perfect and design our bodies has been unprecedented. Breast enhancement is a sweet sixteen birthday present in the suburbs of America, while eating problems - from bulimia to obesity - are growing daily, affecting girls as young as six. The body is no longer a given and to possess a flawless one has become the ambition of millions. In China, women are having their legs broken and extended by 5cms. In Iran, behind the Hijab there are 35,000 cosmetic nose reconstructions a year. In Brazil breasts and bottoms are reshaped along with the face so that women there, as in China and Iran (and pretty much everywhere else in reach of global media) can reflect western norms of beauty.In her years of practice as a psychoanalyst, Susie Orbach has come to realise that the way we view our bodies is the mirror of how we view ourselves: our body becomes the measure of our worth. In this book, she finally raises the fundamental questions about how we got there.

About the AuthorProfessor Susie Orbach - the therapist who treated Princess Diana for her eating disorders - is the founder of the Women's Therapy Centre of London; a former columnist for The Guardian; a visiting professor at the London School of Economics; and the author of 1978 best-seller Fat is a Feminist Issue. She is probably the most famous psychotherapist to have set up couch in Britain since Sigmund Freud. She lives in London.

Review'Virtually all feminist debate on body image and beauty imagery owes its existence to Susie Orbach's enduring formulation.' - Naomi Wolf, bestselling author of The Beauty Myth 'Susie Orbach's pioneering work isn't just the first to expose the links between sexual politics and female dieting; it remains the classic work on the subject...it is more essential than ever that Fat is a Feminist Issue be read by every woman.' - Susan Faludi, bestselling author of Backlash

Product DescriptionIn one volume together with its bestselling sequel When it was first published, "Fat is a Feminist Issue" became an instant classic and it is as relevant today as it was then. Reflecting on our increasingly diet and body-obsessed society, Susie Orbach's new introduction explains how generations of women and girls are growing up absorbing the eating anxieties around them. In an age where women want to be sexy, nurturing, domestic goddesses, confident at work - an equal to their male counterparts, and feminine too, the twenty-first-century woman is poorly armed for survival. Never before has the "Fat is a Feminist Issue" revolution been more in need of revival. Exploring our love/hate relationship with food, Susie Orbach describes how fat is about so much more than food. It is a response to our social situation; the way we are seen by others and ourselves. Too often food is a source of anguish, as are our bodies. But "Fat is a Feminist Issue" discusses how we can turn food into a friend and find ways to accept ourselves for who and how we are. Following the step-by-step guide, and you too can put an end to food anxieties and dieting.

ReviewWith the publication of Fat is a Feminist Issue in the 1970s, psychotherapist Susie Orbach identified the unhappy, unhealthy relationship that many women have with food and their body image and suggested a sane and sensible new approach to end the harmful cycle of self-loathing, denial, dieting and bingeing that ensnares an alarming proportion of us to lesser or greater degrees. She was right, of course, but all these years on her wisdom is more needed than ever, as obesity becomes a national problem while simultaneously anorexia and bulimia affect more and more girls - and, increasingly, boys - at younger and younger ages. So this little book should find a place on the bedside table (or kitchen shelf) of every woman who has ever broken a crash diet with a chocolate orgy. Short on words but big on message, it aims to 'transform your eating from eating that hurts or is chaotic into eating that calms and nourishes you'. Orbach has identified the five keys that 'will help you eat in a new way and enable you to be the size that is right for you'. They are: Eat When You are Hungry: Eat the Food Your Body is Hungry for; Find Out Why You Eat When You Aren't Hungry; Taste Every Mouthful; Stop Eating the Moment You are Full. It's as easy and as difficult as that. She acknowledges that it will take time to change the habits of a lifetime, and recommends that you take the book at your own pace, reading a few pages at a time and as often as you find helpful. You may absorb the ideas instantly, or take time to get the hang of others - and it might be that just one of the sensible observations is your own personal key to achieving the goal of 'calm eating'. This is a book to work with; and while it is fervently anti-diet, it is very pro-food. 'Eating is pleasurable. Eating is delicious. Eating is sensual,' says Orbach. Once you can agree with her wholeheartedly, without even thinking of adding, 'Yes, and I'll live on herb tea tomorrow to make up for it', you will have succeeded. (Kirkus UK)

Product Description'Eating is pleasurable, eating is delicious, eating is sensual' says Susie. But for so many of us eating is associated with anguish and abstinence. From the first page this little book shows us how to think and feel differently about what we eat. So that we eat when we are hungry, eat what we want to eat to satisfy us and stop when we are full. Each page contains an easily absorbed bite-sized statement to transform eating that hurts into eating that nourishes and calms. This book isn't magic but it feels as if it is.

We recommend Felicity Lawrence's new book,
Eat your Heart Out on AnyBody. It is a brilliant expose of the food
industry and its nefarious practices which treat workers
appallingly - like modern days slaves - and allow the few big companies to manipulate what's
available to eat. Felicity really shows the links
between mercantile capitalism and global capitalism and the ways in which our
current economic and trading relationships are turning ever more countries into
food dependent states.

Pocket-sized text discusses attitudes toward eating problems and how they have changed over the last several years. Proposes an innovative to residential treatment utilizing the meanings of anorexia to the sufferer as a basis for therapy. Previously published as Hunger Strike: The Anorectic's Struggle as a Metaphor for Our Age, c1993. Softcover.

In a country where the average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, movies, advertisements, and MTV saturate our lives with unrealistic images of beauty. The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance. Feminist Naomi Wolf argues that women's insecurities are heightened by these images, then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day new products are introduced to "correct" inherently female "flaws," drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty. Wolf rejects the standard and embraces the naturally distinct beauty of all women

This text presents a review of current literature and the results of research on body image. It compares the effects of gender, sexuality, social class, age and ethnicity on our satisfaction with the way we look and suggests how these differences arise. Why, for instance, are heterosexual men much happier with their body images than women or gay men? The author discusses the effect of media presentation of the ideal body and other cultural influences.